Profile summary

Professional biography

Norman Clark retired as Professor of Innovation Systems and Development at the Open University in December 2013. He is now Emeritus Professor and Fellow of the Innogen Institute (based at the Open and Edinburgh Universities). Previously he was Vice-Chancellor of Kabarak University, Nakuru, Kenya, and before that Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at the University of Strathclyde where he is now an Emeritus Professor.

He is a development economist specialising in science, technology and innovation policy issues with particular relevance to Third World problems, a field in which he has published extensively. He has lived and worked in many countries with particular concentration on Kenya, Nigeria and India. Previously he held academic posts at the Universities of Glasgow and Sussex. While at Sussex he acted as the Founding Director of Graduate Studies at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) where he worked for some 15 years. He has also acted as Founding Director of the Technology Planning and Development Unit, University of Ife, Nigeria; Visiting Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Director of the Capacity Development Programme at the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), Nairobi, Kenya. He is now a member of the ACTS Governing Council.

In addition to normal academic activities he has had some 40 years’ experience as an adviser and consultant to governments, international agencies and NGOs including the World Bank, UNCTAD, IDRC, DFID, ITDG, CGIAR, UN-Habitat, UNU and UNDP. He acted also as an adviser to the UK House of Commons Select Committee on Overseas Development on ODA’s [now DFID’s] Special Units (i.e. TPI, COPR, LRDC etc.).

He was a member of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Task Force Team 10 on Science, Technology and Innovation and has acted as an adviser to the NEPAD secretariat in Pretoria, to ILRI in Nairobi and to the World Bank. Over the past 6 years he has been closely involved with the DFID Research into Use (RIU) Programme, firstly as the leader of the assessment and strategy phases of the Sierra Leone country programme and latterly as senior adviser to the RIU management team.